Patients with chronic liver disease often have varying degrees of hepatic fibrosis, and further exacerbations can lead to cirrhosis and even hepatocellular carcinoma. Liver biopsy is the gold standard for the diagnosis of liver fibrosis/cirrhosis, but there are still many limitations. In recent years, non-invasive assessments for liver fibrosis/cirrhosis have gained rapid development. Of these techniques, two different approaches have been validated in clinical practice: imaging methods based on the measurement of liver stiffness, and biological methods based on the serum biomarkers. The two different approaches can complement each other. Current non-invasive assessments for liver fibrosis/cirrhosis tend to be reliable for the detection of advanced fibrosis and cirrhosis, but often lack to distinguish the different early stage of liver fibrosis. Further improving the accuracy of non-invasive assessments might play an important role for clinical management of liver diseases.

OBJECTIVETo investigate whether gene expression profiles can be used to determine risk genes and predict HBV-related cirrhosis progression to liver carcinoma using Significance Analysis of Microarray (SAM) and Prediction Analysis of Microarray (PAM) methods.

METHODSThe Affymetrix GeneChip was used to establish the gene expression profiles of liver tissues from 15 patients with chronic hepatitis B and cirrhosis or hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Differentially expressed genes (fold-change more than 2; P value less than 0.01) were selected by GeneSpring GX software. Risk genes related to cirrhosis and liver carcinoma were generated by SAM and PAM methods. Real-time PCR was used to verify the expression of risk genes in the liver tissues.

RESULTSSamples were clustered into the cirrhosis subgroup (n =15) or the HCC subgroup (n =15). A total of 497 differentially expressed genes were identified, SAM identified 162 significant genes, including 18 up-regulated genes and 144 down-regulated genes (fold-change:-1.46 to 1.28). PAM identified 22 genes with a "poor risk signature" (defined with a threshold of 5.5), which were associated with classifying cirrhosis and liver carcinoma; of these risk genes, 4 were down-regulated and 18 were up-regulated in the HCC group compared to the cirrhosis group (fold-change: 2.038 to 7.897, P value less than 0.01). The correction of classification was more than 80% . FOXP1, SPINK1 and KCNJ16 were verified by real-time PCR as differently expressed in the two subgroups (P value =0.011, 0.002 and 0.004, respectively).

CONCLUSIONThe altered gene profiles of carcinogenesis in HBV-related cirrhosis involves hundreds of genes. The combination of three "poor risk genes" may represent potential targets for diagnosis and prediction of liver carcinoma progression.

Adult ; Carcinoma, Hepatocellular ; genetics ; pathology ; Female ; Gene Expression Profiling ; Hepatitis B, Chronic ; complications ; genetics ; pathology ; Humans ; Liver Cirrhosis ; genetics ; pathology ; virology ; Liver Neoplasms ; genetics ; pathology ; Male ; Microarray Analysis ; Middle Aged ; Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis ; Transcriptome

Objective To investigate the relationship of T2DM with acute glucose fluctuations and IMT. Methods Forty-five cases of T2DM patients were selected from January 2013 to 2014 February in our hospital as T2DM group, 50 cases of T2DM patients with acute cerebral infarction were selected in our hospital on the same period with T2DM group as DMCI group,the carotid artery IMT of two groups were measured, the patients in the DMCI group were divided into IMT thickening group(n=29), IMT normal group(n=21), the data of every groups were compared and the correlation of IMT with other indicators were analyzed. Results ①SBP, DBP, LDL-C, TC, TG, HbA1C, IMT, MAGE of DMCI group were higher than T2DM group, the difference was significant(P<0.05). ②SBP, LDL-C, IMT, MAGE IMT of IMT thickening group was significantly higher than IMT normal group, the difference was significant (P <0.05). ③MAGE, LDL-C, SBP were the influence factors for IMT (P<0.05). Conclusion Patients with high blood sugar stable and effi-cient glucose lowering blood sugar fluctuations can reduce the risk of atherosclerosis, reduce the incidence of diabetic complications.

Objective:To investigate the effects of myeloid differentiation protein-2 (MD-2) on paclitaxel resistance cells in triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) through EGFR signaling pathway.Methods:Immunohistochemical method was used to detect the expression of MD-2 in cancer tissue and adjacent tissue of TNBC patients, and the relationship between MD-2 expression and clinicopathological parameters of patients was analyzed. The TNBC paclitaxel-resistant cell line was constructed and MD-2 expression in cells was interfered. Cell invasion was detected by Transwell, and cell apoptosis was detected by flow cytometry. The signaling pathways regulated by MD-2 were screened by transcriptome sequencing and verified by Western blot.Results:The expression of MD-2 was significantly enhanced in cancer tissues relative to adjacent tissues. High expression of MD-2 was closely related to clinical stage, tumor size, tumor recurrence and metastasis ( χ2=4.50, P=0.032; χ2=2.55, P=0.011; χ2=4.40, P=0.036). In cell experiments, compared with normal breast cells, the expression of MD-2 in TNBC cell lines was significantly enhanced. Compared with sh-NC group (100±11.52) (6.81±0.57), knockdown of MD-2 could inhibit the invasion (61.44±6.78) ( t=4.99, P=0.008) but promote apoptosis (15.19±1.06) ( t=12.06, P<0.001) of paclitaxel resistant TNBC cells. Transcriptome sequencing and Western blot results showed that MD-2 mainly affects the biological behavior of TNBC cells by regulating the EGFR signaling pathway. Conclusions:MD-2 promoted TNBC cell invasion and paclitaxel resistance, which may be achieved by affecting the EGFR signaling pathway. MD-2 is expected to become an effective target in TNBC treatment.

Objective By comparing the physical properties (cell area, volume and elastic modulus) of red blood cells (RBCs) between newborn infants and the elderly over 80 years old, and correlation with the physiological and biochemical parameters such as total cholesterol and glycosylated hemoglobin, the effects of different ages and biochemical parameters on RBC physical properties were analyzed. Methods The mcropipette aspiration was used to measure the surface area, volume and elastic modulus of erythrocytes in newborn infants and the elderly over 80 years old, and the data were analyzed by statistical distribution analysis, correlation analysis and regression analysis. Results The mean values of RBC volume, surface area and elastic modulus in the elderly over 80 years old were smaller than those in newborn infants, and the mean values of RBC mechanical parameters in the same age group were not significantly different. The erythrocytes geometric parameter distribution of newborn infants was more concentrated than that of the elderly, while the elastic modulus distribution of newborn infants was more dispersed than that of the elderly. The mechanical properties of RBCs in newborn infants were highly correlated with the total cholesterol and gestational week; the mechanical properties of RBCs in the elderly were highly correlated with diastolic blood pressure and glycated hemoglobin. Conclusions There are significant differences in physical properties of RBCs between newborn infants and the elderly over 80 years old, and the biochemical parameters that affect physical properties of RBCs at different ages are also different.

Ancestry composition of populations and individuals has been extensively investigated in recent years due to advances in the genotyping and sequencing technologies. As the number of populations and individuals used for ancestry inference increases remarkably, say more than 100 populations or 1000 individuals, it is usually challenging to present the ancestry composition in a traditional way using a rectangular graph. To address this issue, we developed a program, AncestryPainter, which can illustrate the ancestry composition of populations and individuals with a rounded and nice-looking graph to save space. Individuals are depicted as length-fixed bars partitioned into colored segments representing different ancestries, and the population of interest can be highlighted as a pie chart in the center of the circle plot. In addition, AncestryPainter can also be applied to display personal ancestry in a way similar to that for displaying population ancestry. AncestryPainter is publicly available at http://www.picb.ac.cn/PGG/resource.php.
Computer Graphics ; Genetics, Population ; Humans ; Software